How to Improve Your Marketing Strategy in 2020

With less than two weeks remaining in the year, now is the perfect time to do a little last-minute marketing strategy cramming. There’s nothing like pressure and a critical year-end deadline to get the most out of your creative juices. Since we’re talking about the future here, you need to make sure that your plans for 2020 are future proof.

And, by future proof, we mean strategies aimed at anticipating core marketing trends poised to break out next year. The tips you’ll encounter here are not your run of the mill type of stuff, like creating a budget or refreshing your website or even clarifying your brand.

You already know all that.

What we’re talking about is a mix of sci-fi futurism with a little common-sense marketing thrown in for good measure. If you’re stuck in neutral because of all the holiday distractions, we got you covered. Here are five essential marketing strategy tips to improve your game and get you ready for the future.

Let’s go.

Tip 1: Understand that Change is Inevitable.

Everything changes. Your audience keeps changing all the time. Last year’s superstar strategy may or may not work this year. New technologies are changing the marketing landscape, and consumers react differently to advertising stimuli now, compared to several years ago.

According to a Techwalker and Hubspot report on upcoming marketing trends in 2020:

Net sentiment for conversational advertising data had a significant drop over the past year.

New methods such as social media e-commerce and voice search are driving more conversions now.

Your marketing strategy needs to adapt to upcoming trends. If this means switching to a social marketing or voice search-led approach, that’s where you need to be. Make sure to keep abreast of the latest updates each platform introduces to stay ahead of the curve.

Tip 2: Harness the Power of Augmented and Virtual Reality

For your brand to remain relevant to the next generation, you need to embrace and use new technologies as part of your marketing strategy. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) will be big in 2020. AR will help boost customer engagement in traditional retail stores, and VR will enhance experiences online.

Tip 3: Don’t Fear Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around. However, the idea that computers are taking over is causing an irrational fear of technology. According to the Talkwalker report, there were over 4.7 million mentions of AI in the first half of 2019 alone. The glaring part is the 50% negative emotion score surrounding these mentions.

Computers are great at tedious tasks like aggregating and segmenting data, while humans are slow and prone to errors. What humans do best is interpreting information to come up with better strategies. Instead of fearing a future with artificial intelligence, marketing teams should embrace the use of AI to future proof their 2020 efforts.

Tip 4: Prioritize Customer Data Privacy

The disinformation and data privacy issues of the past few years have led to users not trusting social media as much. If your brand has taken a hit due to a similar problem, concentrate your 2020 marketing efforts into rebuilding that trust. If you were fortunate enough to be spared from any data privacy concerns, focus your efforts into making sure it stays that way.

Consumers generally don’t trust brands to keep their data safe but give their details away in exchange for more personalized services. Build your social media strategy by using AI for advanced analytics and only select data relevant to your audience. Take advantage of public information to tailor messages that resonate with your users in a non-intrusive way.

Tip 5: Make it Worthwhile for Community Content Creators

One of the hardest marketing strategies is building an engaged online community. Help your brand by leveraging the hard work put forth by the community and provide incentives for useful content. It’s no surprise that user-generated content (UGC) drives roughly 90% of all purchasing decisions. Compared to celebrity endorsers and other gimmicks, customers can relate to real people better. Encourage users to generate content by giving away prizes, discounts, or event invites.

Ben is a Web Operations Executive at Info Tracer who takes a wide view from the whole system. He authors guides on entire security posture, both physical and cyber. Enjoys sharing the best practices and does it the right way!